High ground near “King George’s Hill,” whence the King viewed the main battlefield of 1916; the drawing shows this in the distance. The foreground was won last July by the Manchesters. They found in No Man’s Land the bodies of many Frenchmen killed in earlier fighting, and buried them beside their own dead. Not all the bodies could be identified: Some of the crosses shown in the drawing bear such inscriptions as “In honoured Memory of Two Unknown French Soldiers, buried here.” [Illustration] LXXIII (a and b) A ROAD NEAR THE FRONT The canvas screen on the left remains from a time when this stretch of road was under enemy observation. The battle of the Somme has left it far behind the front. From a point just beyond the trees indicated upon the skyline on the right every detail of a part of the fighting on July 1st, 1916, could be seen. [Illustration] A TRAIN OF LORRIES Whether on the road between a rail-head and the front, or during a halt by the way, or at rest in their own park, the lorries of a Division keep their proper distance or interval from each other, like men on parade. If one falls lame it is taken in tow; if disabled past towing, it falls out and waits for a first-aid mobile workshop to come and repair it. The scene here is one of the two chief roads to the Somme front. In July and August, 1916, the procession of lorries along it was often unbroken for several miles. Field railways have much lightened its traffic since then. [Illustration] LXXIV ON THE SOMME. R.F.C. MEN BUILDING THEIR WINTER HUT To most English soldiers it is one of the compensations, and not of the hardships, of active service that they so often have to do work which is not their own trade nor a regular part of all soldiering. They find a flavour of the sport of peace-time camping-out in the work of making or finding their own shelter from the weather. Sometimes it is done, as here, with excellent materials, sometimes with hardly any at all, and the man who has built himself a rain-proof hut, for one, out of a few old biscuit tins, some sticks and a waste piece of corrugated iron enjoys a special thrill of triumphant ingenuity. [Illustration] LXXV MARICOURT: THE RUINS OF THE VILLAGE Near Maricourt the British line ended, and the French began, during the battle of the Somme. Blue and khaki were equally blended in the endless lines of traffic passing both ways through Maricourt and raising a barrage of dust all along the road to Bray-sur-Somme. At Maricourt crossroads there was a doubled post of military police, one man British and one French, ready with rebuke or instruction in either tongue. The place is now several miles behind the British front, and its old animation is gone. It and the woods near it are less completely destroyed than most of the neighbouring villages. Many walls are standing; even a few roofs remain. [Illustration] LXXVI ON THE SOMME, NEAR MAMETZ